Marguerite Casey Foundation Selects Head of Workers Lab as New Leader (Transitions)

Marguerite Casey Foundation

Carmen Rojas, founder of the Workers Lab, will become president and CEO of the $800 million foundation next summer. She currently serves on its Board of Directors and will move into her new role on June 1.

Rojas succeeds Luz Vega-Marquis, who has led the grant maker since 2001 and who announced in June she was retiring.

Charity Navigator

Stephen Rockwell has been appointed chief ratings technology officer. He comes to the charity watchdog from the American Friends Service Committee, where he served as chief information and technology officer.

Ford Motor Company Fund

On January 1, Mary Culler will become president of the car company’s corporate-giving arm, which has a budget of $55 million. She will continue to serve as chief of staff for Ford’s Office of the Executive Chairman and development director for its Michigan Central Station redevelopment, in Detroit. She succeeds Jim Vella, who is retiring after more than 31 years at the automaker.

More New CEOs

Angie Carmignani, executive director of the Taylor Family Foundation, has been promoted to CEO of this $16 million grant maker in Livermore, Calif.

Cindy Greenberg, interim president and CEO of Repair the World since March, has accepted the role permanently. Previously she was founding executive director of Repair the World NYC, its local affiliate in New York.

Casey Reitz, executive director of Second Stage Theater, will become president of the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in December.

DePriest Waddy, executive director of the Jefferson County Committee for Economic Opportunity, in Birmingham, Ala., has joined Families First as CEO. He succeeds Marybeth Leamer, a board member who has served as interim CEO for the past year.

Other Notable Appointments

Hannah Chotiner-Gardner, deputy chief development officer at Physicians for Human Rights, has been promoted to chief development officer.

Ellen Collins has joined the Mississippi Alliance of Nonprofits and Philanthropy as chief operating officer. Most recently she was director of the Prosperity Center for Midtown Partners.

Lee Rolontz, executive vice president of television production at iHeartMedia, has joined Global Citizen as senior vice president of broadcast and events.

Malena Rousseau, research and evaluation coordinator at the Buffett Early Childhood Institute, has been hired as program associate at the Iowa West Foundation.

Departures

Greg Berman is leaving the Center for Court Innovation. He was one of the founders of the organization in 1996, which serves as a partnership between the New York State Court System and the Fund for the City of New York. He became executive director in 2002.

Donna Dean will retire as chief investment officer of the Rockefeller Foundation at the end of the year. She has served in the role since 2001. Since Dean joined the foundation in 1995, its endowment has grown from $2.4 billion to $4.4 billion.

Emily Anne Gullickson, CEO of the Arizona Chamber Foundation, is stepping down. She will continue serving as co-founder and executive director of A for Arizona.

Legacies

Stefan Edlis, a major collector of contemporary art and donor to Chicago art institutions, has died at age 94. He emigrated to the United States from Germany at age 15 to escape the Nazi regime. He later founded Apollo Plastics in Chicago, and he and his wife, Gael Neeson, began collecting art. From their collection, they have donated more than $500 million worth of artworks to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where Edlis served as vice chair of the museum’s Board of Trustees until his death. The couple made another $10 million cash gift in 2012 to build a new theater at the museum.

Morton Mandel, who was the 2019 winner of the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy, died on October 16 at age 98. With his late brothers, he co-founded the Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel Foundation, and he also founded the Morton and Barbara Mandel Family Foundation with his wife. His gifts included $23 million earlier this year to the Cleveland Clinic, $10 million to the Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2014, and more than $30 million to Jewish educational and cultural causes in Palm Beach County, Fla. The Mandel brothers founded Premier Industrial Corporation, a Cleveland distributor of electrical equipment, and Morton Mandel was also the author of the book It’s All About Who You Hire, How They Lead.

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M.J. Prest has been writing about major gifts, grant making, and executive moves for the Chronicle since 2004. Email M.J.